The village seems to absorb the morning light, so the residents only see darkness. The closer I get, the more expressions of sorrow I see on the faces around the village.
The Adventures Guild building is not as busy as the night before. There are a few bloodied knights and a smaller mix of archers and mages.
Everyone has a disheartened look strewn across their faces. I do not look much better with slimy, eroded armor, mismatched with other parts to cover myself.
I walk up to one of the attendants at the front desk, he was a male Demi human with silver hair and cat-like ears. I gently set the giant ear on the counter.
With a loud thud, the ear rests on the counter. I thought I had set it down gently; it must be quite heavy. The crash startles the man, and his eyes snap to my helmet.
“Sir. What is this?” He asks
“I completed a quest; I came in last night and took a quest to kill some wolves.”
I pull out what’s left, the tattered, blood-stained paper that crumbles away with the slightest touch. He looks at the illegible writing on the paper and bends down under the counter, and I hear paper shuffling. He pulls up another paper with the same quest on it.
“Is this the one?”
“Yes! That’s it.”
“This one is for killing a pack of wolves in the Hyrilan cliff face. There is no way that’s a wolf ear.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, man; I did. And this is the thing I killed.”
“We have a truth test; please verify that you have completed it.”
He reaches below the counter and raises a wooden box. Inside is a yellow glass orb.
“Please place your hand on this and say you have completed the quest.”
When I place my gauntlet on the orb, it gives off a low hum and a dim light.
“I completed the quest by killing a wolf at the Hyrilan cliffs.”
The orb hums louder, and then a brighter light emits from it. The man pulls it away and puts it back under the counter. I wonder how that orb works. Is it just like a truth detector, that if I can believe something is true, it will say it's true?
“Sorry about that. I have to check everything. Then I’ll get your reward.”
He walks into a back room, comes out with a small leather pouch, and places it on the counter with a ting of coins. He empties it on the counter, along with a few copper—and silver-looking coins and one gold coin.
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“The gold coin is for the ear because it's so strange for such a large ear for a wolf. When you retrieve the body, you can sell the rest of it to the government office. We don’t usually take parts, so go straight to the government building to sell rare monsters.”
I nod and take the coins off the counter as the man struggles to pick up the giant ear, which is still slowly dripping blood on the counter. As I walk away to one of the boards again, I see a few more people trying to help him lift his ear into another back room.
I walk over to a quest board with the most listings and someone else looking at it as well. He is covered in light, hard-looking leather and has a bow drawn across his chest.
“Why is everyone so glum?”
I ask the man as he startles, just noticing me. He looks over at me, and I see he has bags under his eyes and a dead stare forward.
“Everyone took a new quest. It turned out that we had to burn a village across the border. There were so many screams. So much blood. And no way out. If we abandoned the quest, we would be enemies of the church, and we could never survive that.”
He puts his hands over his face and scratches his hands down, leaving scratch marks dripping blood.
“I never wanted this life! I just wanted to make money for my family!”
As he runs out the door with a slam. No one even bats an eye as they stare at their empty cups. I look back to the quest board, and another quest catches my eye.
“Clear Mysterious Forest”
The capital requests adventures to join a raiding party of the mysterious forest east of the capital city for colonization. Each adventurer will be compensated for how much they do.
All adventures willing to join must meet at the capital guild hall in 3 nights.”
All the other quests are for gathering herbs or other small extermination quests, but they won’t strengthen me. I don’t like the thought of returning to the capital; no one should be able to notice me. I still don’t like it. But as long as I can get stronger.
I feel the fire ignite in my chest and feel a burning rage to kill. A crash behind me snaps me back. I see a strong-looking lady with blueish-brown hair throw her cup to the ground and stand up, pushing her chair over.
“We never wanted to do that! But you forced us to go! And now he’s dead!”
She yells at the other people at her table and storms out the door. I realized I did not care about the class I came here with. Although they are not in the same boat as me, they must be training lightly.
I still don’t feel anything, even though I know there should be at least a shred of guilt for not helping them. But I feel nothing. It feels good not to have the burden of morals on my shoulders.
I pump my shoulders up, feeling better about myself, and walk out the door into the morning light shining on the dirt road heading through the town.
Having not felt hungry since I became a skeleton a few days ago, I figure I don’t need to eat; I wonder how I can spend the money I just earned. A new sword might help; the carved beak sword feels flimsy.
I noticed a familiar head down under his stall's table, rummaging around in a box full of metal scraps.
“I have returned; I want to buy a sword!”
The man gasps, startled by someone walking up to his stall without noticing. He hits his head on the table with a *Thunk* and the swords on the table clang with the force. The man holds the back of his head and wobbles backward, looking me up and down.
Because I wore a complete set of armor and was a skeleton, I became really stealthy in a short amount of time. The short man with big, scruffy bear eyes widens as he sees my shiny black cloak and remembers me from last night.
“Oh, it’s you, Mr. “Has no money, what do you want now?”
“I need a new sword; how much for this one?”
I point to a relatively normal sword, nothing fancy, hoping it would lower the price.
“That one’s six copper”
I reach inside my armor and grab the coins sitting on my pelvis. I look at them and see I only have three copper, four silver, and one gold. I grab a silver coin, hand it to the short man, and ask.
“Can I pay with this?”
“Oh, so you do have a good amount of money.”
“I just got it from a quest I did, so can I pay for it with this or not?”
“Yeah, just let me get your change.”
He slams a large, heavy rectangular box of metal into the table. He opens it, reaches in, and grabs a handful of copper coins. He sets the box on the table and grabs another handful. He does this several times until a small pile of copper coins forms on his table.
“Ok, here is your change.”
I stare at him and the coins. This seems like an absurd exchange rate. I hand him the silver coin and count each coin as I grab it.
I counted 17 copper coins, a strange number for one silver coin. I put the coins inside my armor, and they clanged on my bones and armor down into my boots, sounding like a coin machine.
I take the sword and quickly leave out of embarrassment for sounding like a coin toy and not thinking it through.
What Should He do Next?
